Anaya kept glancing back at the distant figure while the other two scanned the shoreline for a good place to stop for the night. She was pretty sure it was getting closer and she was even more sure it was indeed a person. She had a really bad feeling.
"Would you please focus on finding us a spot to camp?" Madiza huffed after a while. "Or at least focus on keeping our canoe straight! We're drifting all over the place."
"Oh, sorry," said Anaya. When had she stopped paddling?
Finally they found a good place to disembark and make camp. Tiu went off to find some firewood while Anaya and Madiza stayed closer to the river to set up their hammocks and bugnets. Anaya could not stop glancing at the river.
"Are you going to be this paranoid the entire trip?" Madiza asked in a condescending tone. Anaya took a deep breath before turning to the other girl.
"Are you going to be this bitchy the entire trip?" she asked. Madiza looked offended, but in a very fake way.
"I am simply worried that if you keep getting distracted by every little thing floating in the river, we'll never make it anywhere." She pulled the knot she was tying tight with excessive force, then turned to Anaya and gave her the best virtuous smile she could muster.
"We're hunting for a dragon, remember?" Anaya said. "We should all be vigilant."
Madiza rolled her eyes, but didn't seem to have a counter to that. Anaya scoffed and shook her head, went back to setting up Tiu's hammock.
"I don't even understand why you wanted to come with," she said. "You hate roughing it out in the forest, where everything is gross and messy, and you probably hate Tiu and I even more."
"That's not--!" Madiza started but quickly cut herself off. Anaya gave here a wide eyed look. Her face was red and her brow scrunched up in anger.
"What, you suddenly love camping?" Anaya mocked. "Your knotwork tells me otherwise."
Madiza's entire body was rigid, her fists clenched tightly at her sides, her lips pursed together. She looked like she was about to pop. Then she released all that tension and immediately she had deflated and was back to her regular snobbish self.
"My motivations are my business," she said. "You don't need to concern yourself with them."
Then she turned and walked off, leaving Anaya alone at the shore.
~x~
The atmosphere around the campfire was tense, to say the least.
Tiu had returned with the firewood before Madiza had recovered from her tantrum, and while she had been gone, Anaya had given a completely truthful and unexaggerated recount of their row. Tiu had believed... probably most of it, and then the two had set out to pull the moisture out of the wood and building the fire.
Tiu had always been better at matter manipulation than Anaya, so she did most of the heavy lifting with the drying; Anaya mostly just watched as Tiu's hand glided along the wood, the little droplets of water rising to the surface and dancing after her fingers. As she got to the end of the log, she flicked her wrist, sending a spray of water flying behind her. Then she started on the next one as Anaya took the now mostly dry piece of wood and started to chop it up into smaller pieces with the machete they'd packed.
When Madiza returned, she didn't seem embarrassed at all, but she did have her skirt full of slightly frosted guavas. Anaya took that as her way of apologizing for being... well, her. Even if she didn't say anything out loud.
And so they sat around the campfire, eating frozen guavas and not saying a word.
The fire was nice and warm. It was weird, Anaya hadn't quite realized how much the coldness would cling to her, but now that they sat by the fire, it felt like she, like the guavas, was thawing in its heat. They had packed a lot of blankets and the warmest clothes they had, but she was starting to worry it might not be enough. She wondered if she still remembered the thermal regulation spell her grandmother had once taught her.
"What's that you got, Madiza?" Tiu's voice brought her back to the present, and she looked over to Madiza just in time to see her shove something down her neckline.
"That's not any of your business," she said hautily. She held her hand against her chest, her eyes cast aside.
Anaya gave Tiu a confused look.
"She was playing with a necklace," Tiu filled her in.
"I was not 'playing'!" Madiza said. She paused then cleared her throat. "If you must know, this necklace," she pointed at a small bulge under her shirt, but did not take the necklace back out to show them, "is a memento from my mother. I sometimes hold it to remember her."
"Oh," said Tiu.
Anaya didn't say anything. She just knew that the only reason Madiza had told them was that they'd feel bad about bringing up her dead mother. And that really rubbed her the wrong way.
And then something went bump.
"What was that?" Madiza squeaked.
It came from the river, the bank just outside the reach of the fire's glow. Anaya was immediately to her feet, machete in her hand. The thrill of having known someone had followed them was almost enough to outshadow the terror of someone having followed them.
"Come out here!" she shouted. Her heart was hammering in her chest, but to her surprise the hand brandishing the machete was steady.
"Yeah, just, hold on!" a voice called back. A familiar voice. "I just have to disembark first!"
"Oh no," said Anaya.
The hand with the machete fell limp to her side. The sound of a boat hitting the shoreline echoed in the dark.
"You girls are really quick paddlers! I wasn't even that far behind when we left but it took me this long to catch up!"
"Wait, who is that?" asked Madiza.
Water splashing. The low rustle of a boat being pulled up on shore.
"I don't know how you forgot to come get me before leaving... Luckily I spotted you with you when you passed by the market place this morning!"
"The giver giveth," sighed Tiu. "Even when she really shouldn't."
A figure stepped into the dome of light.
"Let's find us a dragon, shall we?" Kimo said with a wide grin.
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HELLO EVERYONE!!! DID YOU MISS ME??? (probably as much as you missed Kimo)
Yes, we're doing things a bit differently this year, because I have quite a lot of university stuff I need to finish before Christmas and I will sadly have to prioritise that (because I do want to actually graduate one of these years lol) I am also quite sad that I'll only be able to provide 4 parts this year, but I will be in close proximity with the creation process (and proof reading everyone's parts lol) and as is customary I will be closing out the story. Maybe, as is also becoming customary, it'll even be a double part ending, so you'll get 5 parts out of me hah! But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
In any case, I don't know at all where this is going or how we'll get there, but I do love dragons, so I hope nothing bad happens to it! Good luck to Mutu trying to keep this patchwork story from meandering in too many diractions. Next topic is "Purple", have fun!
also I'm changing my signoff, bye!!!
Pede out.
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